Equipment Design(Pressure Vessel)(Distillation Column)

1. Did we see the risks and challenges of our process equipment design project?

Yes, we did. Risks and uncertainties characterize all activities be they in

production, services and exchange. They affects all the fundamental variables that
determine planning, implementation, monitoring, adjustment, behaviour and
explain choices, and bring about decisions. Patrick Chan (1990), observed that, in
all fields the future remains uncertain and risky. James Esau Okema (1999),
argued that, risk and uncertainty is the threat of variability, instability and lack of
knowledge of events and activities; and lack of appropriate technology to handle
the events and activities. And that project risks and uncertainties are results of
both exogenous and endogenous factors. (Okema, 2006) There are a lots of
challenges we might meet during the project. One of them is timeline and budget
constraints. As industries become more and more diversified and competitive,
process teams will face increasing pressure to meet corporate demands at
breakneck pace. Secondly, you may overlook potential cost saving opportunities
due to historically established paradigms. As with any job function in any
industry, you can find yourself stuck in a rut of “this is the way we’ve always
done it” when it comes to designing and building your process. While the
historical methods and practices are almost always founded on good engineering
principles, they are historical, and new technologies and practices may have
evolved. Lastly, you need to maximize your resources. This is, potentially, the
greatest challenge for process engineering teams: you have a lot to do, and you
have few people to get it done.

2. How to manage the risks and challenges?

One of the ways to manage the risk and challenges is all possible risk and
uncertainty should be identified, assessed, analyzed and distributed among the
parties involved or those that can get involved according to their capacity,
competency and characteristics. After that, allocation and distribution of the
various risks and uncertainties to those that can handle them better should be
done through terms and conditions of contract. Last but not least, monitoring,
evaluation, response and mitigation by those assigned by terms and conditions of
contracts. (Okema, 2006)

3. Do we already posses the necessary knowledge to complete the process equipment

design project within the schedule?

During design projects you bring industrial and academic knowledge together and
apply them in real industrial assignments. For the academic knowledge we had
 been taught in previous years in university in certain subject such as plant design,
unit operation I and II as well as process optimization. The knowledge we learned
through these subjects can help us solve certain more general problems
encountered during the projects. However, we are lack of industrial knowledge as
we are still students and haven’t get through career life yet. Even though some of
us may passed through industrial training but the information we get there still
not enough for us to complete this project. We not posses the complete
knowledge to complete the project but we can learned the knowledge through
internet, experiences from alumni or others experts as well as literature review to
complete the process equipment design project within the schedule.

4. The time is short and do not get sufficient time for the process equipment design
project and how to manage our time to work together with our group members?

Firstly, we need to distribute the tasks evenly among the members. We need to
balanced the work load for all of the members to achieve the most efficient
productivity of the team. After that, allocation and distribution of the various
harder tasks to those that can handle them better should be done. This can allow
every tasks to finish in time by eliminate the probability of having drag of task
due to lack of capability. Then, we could complete most important tasks first. We
need to finish the fundamental tasks first before heading to the extended tasks.
This can help us to save some times as mostly fundamental tasks are more
time-consuming than the others and the extended tasks normally is some add-on
which can finish easily as long as we have done our fundamental tasks. Lastly,
we shouldn’t allow unimportant details to drag you down. We often allow tasks
to take much, much longer than they could by getting too hung up on small
details. So, we need to eliminate this habit to gain ourselves more time to finish
the whole project.

5. How to start out process equipment design projects? Where to start our work?

The engineering design process normally distributed into nine steps. Firstly, we
need to identify the problem. The engineering design process starts when we ask
the following questions about problems that you observe such as what is the
problem or need, who has the problem or need and why is it important to solve.
Then, the second step is do background research which we can learn from the
experiences of others. This can help us find out about existing solutions to similar
problems, and avoid mistakes that were made in the past. So, for an engineering
design project, do background research in two major areas, which are users or
customers and existing solutions. Thirdly, we need to specify the requirements.
Design requirements state the important characteristics that our solution must
meet to succeed. One of the best ways to identify the design requirements for
 your solution is to analyze the concrete example of a similar, existing product,
noting each of its key features. Then, we need to brainstorm solutions. There are
always many good possibilities for solving design problems. If we focus on just
one before looking at the alternatives, it is almost certain that we are overlooking
a better solution. Good designers try to generate as many possible solutions as
they can. After that, we need to choose the best solution which we normally look
at whether each possible solution meets our design requirements. Some solutions
probably meet more requirements than others. Reject solutions that do not meet
the requirements. Moreover, we need to develop the solution. The development
shall involves the refinement and improvement of a solution, and it continues
throughout the design process, often even after a product ships to customers.
Nevertheless, we need to build a prototype. A prototype is an operating version of
a solution. Often it is made with different materials than the final version, and
generally it is not as polished. Prototypes are a key step in the development of a
final solution, allowing the designer to test how the solution will work. After that,
we need to do testing and re-designation. The design process involves multiple
iterations and redesigns of our final solution. We will likely test our solution, find
new problems, make changes, and test new solutions before settling on a final
design. Lastly, we need to communicate the results.To complete our project, we
need to communicate our results to others in a final report and/or a display board.
Professional engineers always do the same, thoroughly documenting their
solutions so that they can be manufactured and supported.

6. Do you have a time to plan? Just follows instruction? Is it work?

Yes, we do. Planning isn’t need a lots of time, couples of hours shall be enough.
As the saying says if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, planning is necessary in
every project. Even though there is an instruction, but instruction is normally
very general and every members in charge of the project had different capability
to complete the task. Some of them maybe can complete the task in shorter time
suggested in the instruction whereas some of them may need more time which is
longer than that given by the instruction. If just follows the instruction the
dragging of task will encountered if there was any of the task which unable to
complete in time. This will ended up resulted in the project can’t complete in time.
However, with the planning, the schedule can be developed based on the
capability of members as well as the hardness of tasks which take the given
instruction as main references. This will prevent the dragging of task from
happening and made the project completed in time.

7. Is it easy to co-operate with the group members. Can we do it alone?

 No, its normally not an easy stuff to co-operate with group members. Every
member has their own working behaviour. Some of them like to work last minute
whereas some of them like to work fast. This contrast will certainly make the
co-operate harder. Besides, building trust between the members isn’t an easy
work. Some individual not wish to take risks to work with someone they not used
to work with as they didn’t trust them can complete their part perfectly and so
they prefer solo work. Moreover, every individual has their own personalities
which this made some people can’t accept certain personality of that individual.
This causes gap between those people and make co-operation an impossible
between them. A project can never be completed alone. A project normally need
skills from various backgrounds and this is hardly can be completed by single
person. Even through someone may know all of the fields needed but master all
of them isn’t possible. Thus, we need a group of experts to make the job done.
Besides, there is a limitation for a person from the view of time. Every individual
on this world only having 24 hours per day. So, even that person is a genius, he or
she can’t complete a group project alone by time. Lastly, not everyone has the
ability to work independently. Some of the individual which lack of certain
capabilities cannot work alone in a project.

8. What is our key commitment? Can we be able to do what is required?

Our key commitment is to achieve the objective of the project within the time
allocated for us. Yes, we can by achieve some criteria to commitment. Firstly, we
need to have strong desire in achieve it. In order to fully commit to something we
will need a clear and personally compelling reason. Without a strong desire we
will struggle when the implementation gets difficult. With that compelling desire
however, "insurmountable obstacles are seen as challenges to be met. The end
result that we are striving for needs to be meaningful enough to us to get us
through the hard times and keep us on track. Then, we need to have keystone
action. Once we have an intense desire to accomplish something we then need to
identify the core actions that will produce the result we're after. In today's world,
many of us have become spectators, rather than participants. We must remember
that it's what we do that counts. After that, we shall count the cost. Commitments
require sacrifice. In any effort there are benefits and costs. Too often we claim we
desire something without considering the costs. Costs are the hardships that we
will have to endure to accomplish our desire. Costs can include time, money, risk,
uncertainty, loss of comfort, etc. Identifying the costs allows us to consciously
choose whether or not we are willing to pay that price. It is extremely helpful
when we are in the middle of one of the costs to recognize that we anticipated this
and decided it was all worth it. Lastly, we need to act on commitments not
feelings. There will be times when we won't feel like doing the critical activities.
We've all been there, getting out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to jog in the winter cold can
be daunting, especially when you're in a toasty warm bed. It is during these times
that we will need to learn to act on our commitments not our feelings. If not, we
 will never build any momentum and will be continually starting over, or as is so
often the case, giving up. Learning to do the things we know we need to do
regardless of how we feel is a core discipline for success.

9. What is the definition of ‘CDIO” Engineering Education for the process equipment
design project? What is the main objective of “CDIO” Engineering Education?

The CDIO Initiative is an educational framework that stresses engineering

fundamentals set in the context of conceiving, designing, implementing and
operating real-world systems and products. Throughout the world, CDIO
Initiative collaborators have adopted CDIO as the framework of their curricular
planning and outcome-based assessment. The CDIO approach uses active
learning tools, such as group projects and problem-based learning, to better equip
engineering students with technical knowledge as well as communication and
professional skills. Additionally, the CDIO Initiative provides resources for
instructors of member universities to improve their teaching abilities. CDIO is
a trademarked initialism for Conceive Design Implement Operate. The general
objective of the CDIO Syllabus is to summarize formally a set of knowledge,
skills, and attitudes that alumni, industry, and academia desire in a future
generation of young engineers.

References
1. J E OKEMA. (2006) Risk and Uncertainty Management of Projects: Challenges of
Construction Industry, 1-10.